Tag: graduation

The ladder

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Life happens at its own pace. For many things, we can’t force them to hurry up or slow down at will. While I personally find it annoying because I have the patience of a two-year-old girl, I still find myself shrugging my shoulders reciting, “it is what it is,” on many occasions. Not necessarily because I want to, but because I know that I’ve done as much as I could’ve and the rest is up to the universe. (The universe and I have a very complicated love/hate relationship.)

Most people who know me know that since I started college in the fall of 2009, I had a plan. I knew what career I wanted and I knew where I wanted to move. Ohio was so far off my radar it was like the Bermuda Triangle had swallowed it up. All my life was spent working toward this one career goal. I climbed that metaphorical ladder rung by rung as I surpassed each step on my pre-career to-do list, but it was when I had to sit back and wait that tensions began to rise. I went from feeling like I was this high achieving, well seasoned, budding journalist waiting for my big break to completely questioning my skills and abilities within a six month time period. I graduated and didn’t have any job offers yet. I sat back for months watching classmates of mine accept positions in the media field that I felt better qualified for. I was angry. Why wasn’t anyone offering me jobs? I had awesome internships, I made good contacts, I was really good at what I could do. But for whatever reason, my resumé was overlooked and I sat around unemployed for months. Eventually, my loans slapped me in the face and demanded that I start forking over excruciatingly painful payments. I needed an income.

There I was, a college graduate with dreams of working alongside fellow journalists, applying for minimum wage jobs near my hometown. I was embarrassed and nursing an understandably crushed ego while working part time as a front desk associate at a hotel near my parent’s house. For awhile, I admit I had given up on myself and succumbed to the idea that I may never work in my professional field. I blamed the job market, technology, my location. I made crazy justifications for why I couldn’t seem to get an entry level job in journalism. I didn’t tell anyone about my work situation because I didn’t want to have to admit to anyone that I wasn’t where I should’ve been. I felt out of place at work. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I know all of my coworkers could tell I was aching to leave as well.

Eventually, I started getting phone calls and interviews for other jobs. I perked up quite a bit, but I kept quiet about my prospects because I didn’t want to make a huge thing out of an interview and then not receive a job offer afterward. I thought, “I really don’t need any other embarrassments right now.” After I went through my depressed stage, I started fighting really hard to get noticed for jobs. I was aggressively reaching out to hiring managers, asking other professionals for help or insight or advice and essentially jumping up and down, flailing my arms and yelling, “look at me, look at me!” But by January 2014, I had exhausted all of my ideas and started falling back into that “I-don’t-know-what-to-do-next” attitude. I had hundreds of applications floating around in cyberspace and all I could really do was wait. And feel worthless, of course. Waiting is always the hardest part.

Then one day while I was working, my phone rang. I had interviewed at this news station the previous October, but they didn’t have any job openings at the time and asked me to get back in touch in the new year. Of course, I never got in touch because I thought nothing would come of it anyway because it was a really big station that I didn’t feel I had a chance with (yeah, nice attitude!). But then they called me. Now, I’m proud to say that my first job in the media field is at a market 17 news station. I’m happy where I am and I finally feel like I fit in at work. Instead of trying to blend in with the walls, I want people to ask me about where I’m working. I want to be able to proudly say that, yeah, my first job took ages to materialize but now that I’m finally working, my job is way more impressive than your job! Of course, I’m not that rude, but it’s nice to know that it was never a matter of being unqualified or inept in my field. It just wasn’t my time yet and I had to wait for something amazing to come along.

So I learned a valuable lesson this past year. While it’s great to have goals, sometimes it’s unfair to place time limits on when you should achieve certain goals. Setting impossible expectations is quite literally setting yourself up for failure. You can’t control every aspect of your life. I told myself I needed to have a job in my field within a very short time after earning my degree, and when I didn’t meet my own expectations, it hurt. I sent myself into a spiral of second-guessing who I was and what I wanted to do, which ultimately forced the idea that I had already failed into my brain. Now I know that I didn’t fail – I didn’t do anything wrong. It just took time and patience and serious perseverance. I’m grateful that I had family and friends who continually cheered for me and kept pumping me up with positive affirmations and encouragement, reassuring me that I was good at what I did and that the perfect job would come along soon. It’s important to keep believing in ourselves too. Just because you may not be where you want to be doesn’t mean that you’ll never get there. Keep the faith and never give up. If you fall down and have to slum it for awhile, at least slum it with pride and the unquestionable knowledge that you’re making your way there, slowly but surely. And when you finally get past that hurdle, I hope you can look back like I have and say, yeah, I totally made it. I made it through that hard stuff and came out the other side stronger and more confident.

So please accept my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have always sent good vibes my way and helped keep my spirits up when I was feeling like a failure. Thank you to those who reached out a hand to help when I asked for advice or leads. Simply, thank you. It’s nice to know that there are people out there who genuinely hope I succeed and are willing to pipe in and whisper words of encouragement when they notice I’m faltering. People like you are the reason the world goes ’round, and you help make my life meaningful. Thank you so very much. I hope I do well at returning the favor.

Cheers!

Correcting tunnel vision

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Perhaps this is going to sound hypocritical, but not many people can do what I’ve done and be humble about it. I’ve worked my butt off for so very long to achieve what I have, and I’m satisfied. This feeling, right now, is exactly what I hoped I would feel.

– June 1, 2013

It’s easier than you think to lose sight of the important things in life. When I graduated college, I wrote a blog detailing how I felt about my life leading up to that day and what I hoped would be in my future and posted it on Facebook. Only four people liked it and two bothered to comment, but I was still glad I wrote it because it was true to how I felt and I knew I wouldn’t want to forget that feeling. Seven months later, I forgot that feeling until I went to the movies tonight and saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I walked out of that theater feeling completely jazzed about life, about possibilities and about truly making the most of the days I have left on this earth. It forced me to take a hard look at how I’ve been thinking these last few months and how I need to get back on track.

The job market hasn’t been kind to me lately. I’ve made this blatantly obvious, but I’ve also been kicking up a lot of dirt just because I thought it would make me feel better. Although it may help a little, it hasn’t changed my situation.. so I know that means I need to change my attitude. I don’t have the full time job in my field that I wanted right now, but I do have a job. That’s more than some people, and I should really quit griping about it. See? A positive from a negative. The societal pressure to go to college and get a job in your degree of study immediately upon graduation is incredibly intense and, in my opinion, a very skillfully created brainwashing technique to churn out a workforce rapidly. I think college was a good choice for me because I truly enjoy learning, but I know plenty of people who didn’t go to college and are sitting much prettier than I am at the moment! The point is, a lot of us allow this grand plan to get in the way of our own desires and I think that’s why we stray and stress so much. Yes, I want a job, but not at the expense of my psyche, my health or my happiness. I can still be proud of who I am and what I’ve done instead of sulkily skimming through online job applications and shamefully hiding away from inquiring minds. I have not fallen from grace because I don’t have a full time job in communications. Furthermore, I (and so many others) need to stop beating ourselves up for not knowing exactly what we want to do in life. It’s okay not to have a steadfast plan, and feeling uncomfortable means you’re growing.

…But I simply can’t predict how I will feel once I step outside this comfort zone, so the only thing I can do is just.. leap. It’s not a plan and that’s scary, but it’s also liberating.

Confucius said, “it does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” I’ve never considered myself to be foolish and certainly not a quitter. My end goal is still to find a job I can enjoy more than the one I’m working at now, but I think I need to stop making myself feel guilty because I’m not where I thought I would be. There are plenty of other things that happened in the last year that I didn’t plan for, but they’ve gloriously changed my life for the better. Yes, I still feel like I need help finding the job that’s right for me, but I need to quit obsessing over it. I’ve had a lot of opportunities fall into my lap at a very young age, and this is the first time I’ve had to work so hard to achieve a goal. But you know what? Perseverance is good for us! So while it’s important to remember what it is exactly that we’re looking for and what we want out of life in the grand scheme of things, it’s also important to live in the now and appreciate the little things. For example, I can move anywhere in the world because I have nothing tying me here, I can spend days in a row with friends or family members because I’m fortunate enough to have time off frequently and I can stick to what I want… or change my mind whenever I feel like it! So what do YOU want?

I want to keep learning. Not from books or computers, but from life, people and through experiences. I want excitement and freedom and to always find joy in the simple things. And most importantly, I want to continue to enjoy what I do no matter how long I’m doing it for.

Maybe these aren’t the best conditions or requirements for a specific job. In fact, they’re incredibly broad and vague and I doubt any employer would snatch me up if I said these were the things I was looking for in a job. 14-year-old Tanya would be so disappointed in me now for changing the plan. But the truth is, having a plan may be responsible.. but straying from the plan and going after what will make you feel best is the most fulfilling. I don’t want to follow the rules or the expectations that others have set for me because that’s not what will make my life fulfilling. So although I don’t yet have that “perfect” job I hoped I would be working by now, I know I’m going to get there. And when I do, it won’t even feel like work.

So until then, I’m going to follow my heart and continue to learn from experience. And even though I’m still scared out of my wits and worried about where this will all take me, I’m confident that I’m going where I need to go and those who matter will be with me and support me throughout the journey.

This moment is the best moment. You can go anywhere, be anything and do anything you want. The choices are daunting and sometimes worrisome, but there’s one beautiful loophole: if you don’t like where your path has taken you, you can choose a different route just as easily.